It’s interesting how young people do not worry. I mean I had no idea where we could go for a dinner but I still was cool.

I tell God age is not a problem and I’m not interested in having children. The population explosion had its worst effects on the Saudi economy. I try to tell God about true love and population explosion problem and He likes that.

After a while, a patient comes out and the attendant calls me in.

Some patients were curious to see a male visitor in that department who didn’t fit. All Dr. Pritima’s male visitors used to be either pharmaceutical agents with bulky bags or doctors but this guy..

This guy looked and smelled like a date!

Dating is considered a taboo in Saudi Arabia and all patients were female and envied Dr. Pritima.

I went in.

She was wearing a very beautiful dress.

She apologized for unexpected number of patients.

I told her I didn’t mind.

We talked for a while. The attendant brought us tea.

She took a sip. She was looking for proper words.

After a few more sips while perusing her book of appointments, she asked me if I could visit her on Thursday 2pm (in 1995, Thursdays used to be half days and the first day of weekends in Saudi Arabia.)

She thought a lunch would be a more appropriate time, especially in a country like Saudi Arabia.

“Sure, it’s a date.”, I agreed. We could spend some more time together because of the weekend, I thought.

My brother Rashid must have regretted rejecting KSU. In KSU, he could have studied Economics in Arabic, which we all speak fluently, instead of studying it in far, far Istanbul in stupid, alien Turkish language which is of no use outside Turkey.

But I respected his choices and tried to play the good brother.

As soon as I finished setting him in his Indian friends’ apartment, God reminded me of THAT GIRL and gave me the next hint. He told me she was on some picturesque mountain top.

I forgot the great Briefing by my good work colleagues about Istanbul’s prostitutes and went to a travel company and asked the agent about nearest tourist mountain city.

He put me on a bus to Bursa.

But Bursa was anything but beautiful. All I found were buses honking their horns in the congested traffic due to Hajj holidays and Baqar Eid festivals (animal sacrifices).

It’s so disgusting a season that it’s alone a reason for a guy like me to thank God for sacrificing His son.

Jesus saved us from a lot of filth but Christians are unaware; they really need to Google on Islamic feast of sacrifices or come experience it first hand.

I was disappointed and confused in Bursa. I could find THAT GIRL nowhere. I went back to travel company and went ahead to Izmir. I found a small zoo there and afterwards, ran into a Syrian cart-pusher selling lemonade.

He refused to take any money from me and gave me two more free especial cups for finally finding someone who spoke Arabic. The poor guy must have suffered his share of Turks’ racism!

He wanted to thank God. Wasn’t a good guy to ask about girls and prostitutes, though.

Then I ran into a bad Kurd guy. I asked him about a place to find bad girls. He cursed me for coming all the way to Izmir looking for bad girls.. instead of the “Colorful Istanbul”.

He was right. How could I forget the Briefing?

I rushed back to Istanbul but by the time I reached it, it was 12am, June 4. And it was bloody cold; I was shivering.

I went to my brother’s apartment without delay and they took good care of me.

They also made sure I was kept away from the bad girls (ugh!) and they all came to see me off at bloody Ataturk Airport at 10am as my flight back to Jeddah was at 1pm.

Such people make you wonder why you paid them $220 and not just $25 they had asked to install a telephone line!

After I returned safe & sound to Jeddah, my bank, NCB ripped me off $1000 traveller checks I had not used and deposited with them.

For a whole year I tried to recover my lost deposit and also to give Rashid an ATM that would work in Turkey without success.

Hamid was closely watching me through my little sister, who found my predicament very amusing. She also found my failure to find a bad girl in Turkey equally amusing.

My brother Hamid then took that opportunity and asked me to leave Rashid and his financial problems to him.

In late February, 1993, I was fired from Management Information Center for advocating “inferior” technology of PCs to Group’s companies in disregard of their heavy investment in IBM mainframes.

My younger brother, Rashid, went to Instanbul for undergraduate studies. But he was having myterious, infinite problems.

I had helped him get admission in my university, KSU (King Saud University) but he had rejected it.

“It looks like baby poop”, that’s how he had described the university and the city, Riyadh.

I had to agree because he had told a truth but wasn’t that a little immature reason to reject free undergraduate studies?

Hamid, my elder brother, told me his plans to tour Syria. I asked him to also include a tour of Turkey to help our poor younger brother.

But he’s a little different sort of a guy. He remembered how Rashid had called our KSU “baby poop”.

After his return from Syria, he told me about a weird incident.

On the last day of his perfect tour, he found a beautiful scene and stopped to take a snap.

Out of the blue came a uniformed officer. He informed my brother that he had violated the law by taking a snap of a classified premises.

“How’s that?” my brother wondered.

The officer showed him a building in the background that looked spooky and had certainly appeared in the shot.

Hamid had to admire that officer.. for his politeness.

He told Hamid he could book him indefinitely on charges of spying. That could ruin his career in Saudi Arabia where he worked for P&G.

But the officer made him a terrible offer. “If you give me your camera, I’ll just pull out the reel and return the camera back to you right away.. and you can walk away with your ‘crime’.”

That was a terribly good offer in notorious Syria. So Hamid thanked that officer for his politeness. But the snaps..

The snaps were lost.

When I heard that weird story, I felt sorry but knew it was God’s mysterious way to correct him for not agreeing to help Rashid. God only corrects good people.

Weird God!

Hamid was also very happy for my inferior job as Data Entry Operator in Dallah Telecom as he dislikes equality.

When it came the time of Hajj holidays, I went to Turkey.

God then reminded me of That Girl (I had seen in 1983) and told me she was in a tourist country.

I asked my colleagues for some advice and got full briefing.. in where to find prostitutes and the correct way to bargain for more than half an hour!

See, I’m an idiot with small brain and all loose screws. I only learned women’s genitals were different from a man’s less than a year ago (God had helped me order porn from Sexy Software — nice guys and girls there.)

So I deserved a COMPLETE IDIOT’S GUIDE, didn’t I?

And God had kindly provided that.

Turned out my brother Rashid just suffered from racist Turks in the dormitory so I gave him some $220 and his Indian friends were so excited, they gave him a dedicated room in their apartment and also gave me a royal tour of Istanbul.

Billions have read Quran since more than 1400 years but none have succeeded in cracking the puzzle of disjoint letters appearing in the beginning of 29 chapters of Quran.

But I can explain what others can’t because no one has known Jesus as I have.

I was serving my jail term, reading Quran when the Voice told me these letters are God swearing by them. That was weird.

It’s a very common habit of Arabs to swear by stuff. How come no one could figure this simple puzzle out?

Because its time had not come. That’s why.

Now anyone can go check my explanation and see for himself whether I’m telling the truth or not.

Even if a single occurrence fails my explanation, it’ll mean I’m wrong.

The good news is that God’s voice is no longer a privilege. Jesus says “My sheep hear my voice and follow me”. In another place, he says “my sheep knows my voice and follows me and I call them by their names”.

I have a personal relationship with Jesus as many others do. I just know him better than anyone else.

When our second child was born, it was a girl. I asked my wife to suggest a name.

She said “I love the name ‘Asma’ the most but your brother has already named his daughter ‘Asma’. I love the name ‘Erum’ next.” I said “Erum is the city God destroyed according to Quran”.

She then suggested “Aasia” and I liked it. I said “That’s a beautiful name. It’s Greek and means ‘welcome’. Adam, a Jew born in Greece had named Turkey “Asia” because it welcomed Cain.”

I then looked up “Erum” in my wife’s book of Islamic names because I wondered why Pakistanis named their daughters after an evil city.

The book said it was of Persian origin and meant “garden(s)”!

I was shocked. I told my wife and she named our daughter “Aasia Erum”.

But I then understood the mystery of Aad & Samood who figure prominently in Quran but no scholar has ever been able to find their ruins, making it embarrassing for Muslims to believe in lies and things that don’t exist except in their minds.